It is well known that copolymers containing vinyl chloride, vinyl acetate and vinyl alcohol are useful materials in forming coating compositions for wood, metal and glass. These copolymers, when compounded with thermosetting resins, have found utility in coating metal whereby strong flexible chemically resistant films are formed. While these compositions and the resulting films usually applied in the form of lacquers and paints, have been widely accepted, the preparation of such copolymers is expensive and time consuming. The copolymers are prepared by copolymerizing vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate in suspension, emulsion or solution systems with a free-radical generating catalyst. Thereafter the resulting copolymers are treated to hydrolysis conditions to partially hydrolyze the acetate portion of the copolymer. The presence of hydroxyl groups in the copolymer is essential to have proper reactivity with the thermosetting resins. Elimination of this hydrolysis step would be advantageous from a production and economic point of view. Further, in such a system the comonomer employed must be one capable of partial hydrolysis.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to employ hydroxyl-containing monomers, copolymerizable with vinyl chloride and copolymers of vinyl chloride and other polymerizable monoolefinically unsaturated vinylidene monomers containing the CH.sub.2 =C&lt; grouping, to obtain copolymers having reactivity with thermosetting resins and thereby eliminate the costly hydrolysis step.